Difference between revisions of "Thomas Jefferson/misquotes"

Revision as of 23:04, 7 June 2011

Misquoting Thomas Jefferson seems to be a popular right-wing pastime.

Here are some things Jefferson did not say but which are widely attributed to him:

A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.

2007-08-15 Rove's 'Mob' Remark: An Age-Old Social Slur: "The esteemed founder never said it. The folks at Monticello's research library witheringly say that old saw has been dogging him for years."

Attributions:

The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.

I can't find a definitive statement that he did not say this, but it's not in any of the reliable collections and nobody cites a source for it.

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 ==Overview==
-[[category:misquotes]]Misquoting [[Thomas Jefferson]] seems to be a popular [[left-wing]] pastime.
+[[category:misquotes]]Misquoting [[Thomas Jefferson]] seems to be a popular [[right-wing]] pastime.
 ==Nonexistent==
 Here are some things Jefferson did ''not'' say but which are widely attributed to him:
--While Jefferson was not a conventional Christian (he had a problem with the idea of a virgin birth) he clearly was a Christian. A study of his personal writings show his signing of his name beneath the quote "In the year of our Lord Jesus Christ," added to that his personal contributions to various Christian Churches, and finally the publishing of the Jefferson Bible in the early 20th century by the Congress of the United States are testaments to the mistake of attributing this quote to Thomas Jefferson for which there is no known source.
 ===Democracy is Mob Rule===
 <blockquote>